


someone's gotta go

by Jonezy



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I have to be up in five hours, So much angst I'm so sorry, Vicbourne, who even am i anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jonezy/pseuds/Jonezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You plan to retire” She accosts him, voice raised, nostrils flared when she finally tracks him down to Brocket Hall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someone's gotta go

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly disgust myself. I am entirely to blame. 
> 
> We all like angst, right? Right?!

“You plan to retire” She accosts him, voice raised, nostrils flared when she finally tracks him down to Brocket Hall.

He went for space. He didn’t run and hide like the fool he is. He’s just taken some space, that’s all. A bit of breathing room away from dances and German and wedding plans and gushing and family love ins.

If he says it enough, perhaps he’ll convince himself.

After all, the rooks only laugh.

He hadn’t been expecting her to find out so fast. Of course he had orchestrated it; the way he had orchestrated the precise flowers the Prince liked. His quiet reassurance of retirement was no more than a message: _I would never get in the way_.

He’s doing this for her, after all. To see her happy. Like she deserves. Like she has earned. And if it can not be with him, then damn right it will be with somebody suitable and damn right he will have a hand in it.

Even if he is not so fond of clockwork movement and insolent looks.

She stands, chest heaving, eyebrows raised, face in challenge but her eyes give her away, are doe like, and if he looks hard enough he can them filling with water, can see the tremble of her hands by her side, can see the slight tremor in her rib cage as she exhales. And normally it would be enough - he would move to her, to comfort and reassure and he would smile and he would make some joke, some comment that he knows she’ll find amusing but today he bristles under _her_ hurt.

Because it should be _him_ hurting. After all, it is _her_ marrying, and it is _her_ that has been too busy to attend his counsel, and it is _her_ that has shrugged past him in dances, and it is _her_ that is indecisive about their contact, and it is _her_ that no longer makes assurance that he will attend dinners.

And yet, and yet.

He looks away, anything to not meet her eye. In the distance, the rooks take flight, their parliament dispersed. _How ironic_. He thinks. _How fitting_. He would laugh, if only he could.

“I was always going to retire one day.” He utters, but his voice doesn’t lather the air with the strength he’d like, he sounds morose, the syllables cracking.

“Now that I have a husband?” She barks. “Is that it? Is your duty _done_ now, Lord Melbourne?”

He grits his teeth. She is looking for cheap rouses because she is young, because she is hot headed, because she is bitingly honest, because she speaks her mind. Because she is not spoken for.

“The two do not correlate” He says, and then remembers. “ _Ma’am_.”

She opens her mouth, but she closes it just as quickly. Instead she blinks, eyelashes battering her cheeks and that is what gets to him more than her words, has always been what has got to him more than her words, will always be what gets to him more than her words: Her silence.

Her silence when he turned her away - drunken and giddy - the first time, her silence when he refused her heart the second. She could scream, and shout, and blather and he would not flinch, but the second that she stopped, he would know. The second she no longer says anything to him, does not use his name, does not seek his counsel, is the second his role is ceased and that, he thinks, that is what he is scared of the most.

He would rather walk away from her under his own duress, than face the fear of her walking away from him at a point in time that he does not know.

That makes him a coward, he thinks. That makes him a fool.

“My cabinet was never going to last forever” He manages, but the words are meek, hold less weight in them than the dust shining in the air. “Things were already bad when you first-.”

His words die away.

When you first took over, he thinks. When we first laughed, and joked, and rode out together. Before reality caught up to us — when we were dancing in a dream.

For a blindsiding moment, he becomes aware that he is deathly jealous of Robert Dudley.

“Courage” She spits, her voice wobbling. “That’s what you always told me. _Courage_.”

“It is nothing to do with courage, ma’am” He counters, turning to face her for the first time in minutes and wishing he never had. She is still wonderful, she is still magnificent, regal and beautiful and young and clever and it is too much. He looks at the floor. “It is to do with the-”

“With the country” She scoffs. “Yes. I know. It is to do with _serving your Queen!_ ” She bellows, and her voice cracks, breaking on her title. Her hand goes to her mouth and he bites the inside of his cheek so hard to keep from touching her that he tastes blood.

“You can always seek me here” He admits, quieter, softer than her harsh tones. That has always been the way to calm her: To be softer in the face of her anger. He has no will to fight her any longer, not with his defence already laying crumpled on the sight of her distress.

She looks somewhere beyond his ear, into the fireplace behind him. Her eyes catch, glistening in the light and he _hates_ it, has flashbacks of standing in this room, watching another woman’s eyes glisten the way hers have, watching another woman walk away from him in a moment he did not foresee.

“You have a husband now.” He finds himself saying to his hands. “Albert’s counsel is good and honest. He’s right — he understands the people in a way that perhaps I, or other politicians, could not. He appreciates the arts so he understands the finer details. That’s a valuable trait to have” He says, slipping back into Lord M the advisor and not Lord Melbourne the newly retired Viscount. “He’ll be very valuable by your side.”

“You were valuable by my side” She says, and it’s so low, and so honest that it drills through his ribcage, throws a spear to his heart.

“I will always be by your side, ma’am.”

She swallows, throat constricting and for the first time, she finds fascination in the floor. Her shoulders heave, but he knows her well enough by now to know she is calming, to know the embers have burned down to ash.

“What will you do” She murmurs wetly. “What will I do.”

Despite himself, despite it all, he smiles. Her eyes catch his at just the right time and he watches the fire in her eyes simmer, then burn out. “I’ve got plenty of studying to do here.”

“With the rooks?”

He nods, grinning and she barks out an abrupt laugh. It’s not long enough — would never be long enough, the sound of her laughter is a medicine so strong that it could envy opium, but it’s enough, and he buries it away, commits it to memory for a long, cold night where he will watch his own fire burn out, where he will watch the rain lash against the window, will watch the snow blanket the lawns, where he will turn to an empty bed and berate himself, his choices.

_Only a fool would turn you away._

She smiles at him, but it’s empty of any joy, doesn’t make her cheeks lift and her eyes crinkle: it’s watery and flimsy and the one he offers in response can’t be much better.

She takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders and he already knows what’s coming — has seen the invisible crown float back onto her head, has seen her transform back into royalty, back into the Queen of England, his Queen, more times than he can think to count.

“Well” She says, as her back snaps into line and her head raises up and he stands, drinking it in as if he is stranded in a desert and these are his last drops of water. He will never not be anything but awed in her presence, awed by the things they have done, and said, and the memories he will forever hold. “I suppose I do have a country to run.”

“And a new government to arrange.”

Her image only falters slightly, the slightest shake of her shoulders—if he’d have blinked, he’d have missed it—but she corrects herself, she clears her throat and she looks him in the eye and he can’t stop himself. He drops to his knee and bows, the way he did the very first time when encountered with a fresh faced, bright eyed Queen, overwhelmed and amused by the fuss and the grandeur.

“It has been a pleasure and an honour, ma’am.” He says, eyes stinging, glad that he has the excuse at least to be able to look at the floor.

“I will not let you rest easily, Lord Melbourne” She says, and he does not miss the way her voice wavers. “Do not think you will spend every day lazing about with birds.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Then you are well met.”

He brings himself to stand, using the opportunity to blink furiously before he locks eyes with her, knowing they have always had the ethereal ability to read each other like a book in only glances.

She nods once, and on the back of a breath so deep her chest shakes, she turns.

There is a moment where he faces her back, a moment where he thinks she will not find the gall to do it, but, once more—perhaps for the final time he considers—she astounds him with a show of strength and courage.

And she leaves. 


End file.
